


no wonder that you’re such a natural

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Series: we tell ourselves stories. || ws!molly au [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Mollymauk Lives Fest, Storytelling, Tea, ws!molly au but in the happier future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 21:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15871881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: “I happen to like talking and tea,” says Molly, and for good measure he slips a bottle of whiskey out of his coat. “Feel like spicing the tea up a bit?” he says with a grin.Caduceus scrunches his nose up at him, deeply offended. “I still don’t know why you all seem to like that,” he says. “It tastes terrible.”or: Molly and Caduceus have tea while Fjord’s asleep.





	no wonder that you’re such a natural

**Author's Note:**

> title is from Kate Voegele’s “Hundred Million Dollar Soul”.
> 
> takes place after the end of [this fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15440007/chapters/35838621), but contains only vague references to the events of it. all you really need to know is that for a time Molly was basically the Winter Soldier figure for the gang.
> 
> in my defense, this is like, 85% meandering friendship development fluff.

Fjord, Molly discovers (or _re_ discovers), snores in his sleep.

It’s a little bit annoying, yeah. He isn’t going to lie about that. It’s not great to be trying to catch a few minutes of sleep only to be interrupted by the sound of a half-orc snoring, very loudly, in the bed next to his. It really makes him wish they’d just dumped Fjord onto Beau instead, but no, Caleb had to take Beau, Jester and Nott with him so they could go investigate whatever the fuck was putting people to sleep for months in this town.

If only Yasha were here. But she’d left a week ago, with the passing of a storm, and Molly’s been a little antsy ever since. He can’t really help it, it’s only been her second trip away since Lynbroke, and he’s grown used to her around.

The door opens. Their new cleric peeks in, and says, “How’s he doing?”

Right. The firbolg. Caduceus Clay. The guy who happens to be taller than Yasha, which is a feat in itself. Also, the member of the Mighty Nein that came into the fold in the aftermath of Molly’s death.

He seems nice. Occasionally he unleashes plagues of insects in the midst of battle, which sets off a teeny little part of Molly that spent days cowering from insects in the back of the circus’ caravan whenever they passed by swampy areas, but, you know. Otherwise, he’s a great guy. Certainly Jester likes him. Everyone likes him. Even the damn dog that mysteriously reappeared in the middle of the night and scared the shit out of Molly a week back likes him.

At least Jester took Nugget with her.

“He’s doing fine,” Molly says, nodding to Fjord, still sleeping on the bed. He’s been like this for a day now. “Here I thought you’d be with Jester.” Two clerics are better than one, after all, and he knows Jester’s been wanting to unleash hell without worrying about healing afterwards.

“She asked me to keep an eye on Fjord, too,” says Caduceus, ducking under the doorframe. God, he’s tall. “And you. Did you sleep last night?”

“Like a baby,” Molly lies, flashing a smile.

“You didn’t,” says Caduceus, after a moment, because he is a perceptive fucker. Easily distracted and very sheltered and new to the world and how it works, but _perceptive_ as hell. He even puts Molly to shame, and Molly tells fortunes on the side. “I actually have some tea for that, y’know.”

Molly straightens up in his seat. In the scant two weeks he’s known Caduceus, the firbolg’s tea (and other non-insect surprises) has honestly shot up to the top of his list of favorite things since Lynbroke. And it’s a long, long list, getting longer by the day. “Well, now, you have to let me try,” he says. He briefly brushes a hand against Fjord’s neck, and sighs, relieved, at the pulse under his fingertips.

Fjord mumbles something about Jester, smiling softly in his seat. Molly snickers, and tugs the covers up over their mighty, fearless leader’s shoulders. “She’ll be back,” he tells him. “In the meantime, I’ll just have some tea. And a nap.”

“I’ll keep watch once you’re asleep,” says Caduceus.

“Thanks bunches,” says Molly, carelessly, fishing for his cards in his coat. Caduceus is pulling out supplies from his travel bag now: a teakettle, bags of tea, water. Then he puts all these on the floor, pours water into the kettle and puts a bag of tea in. He taps the teakettle once, twice, and the bottom glows faintly with warm light.

He looks up, and says to Molly, “I had it enchanted. It’s come in very useful when we couldn’t afford to set a fire.” He gently resettles the lid of the kettle, and says, “Your friends have done a lot of good. A lot of it in your name.”

Molly blinks, as he sits down next to Caduceus, idly shuffling his deck. “I knew about the part where they were doing good,” he says, “it’s hard to miss. But— _my_ name?” In the back of his mind, he thinks he hears the voice of a woman snarl, _tell me who you are._ “That’s flattering.”

“They wanted to keep your memory alive,” says Caduceus, simply.

Isn’t that a kick in the heart. “Oh,” says Molly, quietly.

“I’m glad they don’t have to anymore, with you being back,” Caduceus goes on.

“You’re strangely calm about that,” says Molly. “Me coming back.”

“You’re not undead, and you’re not currently trying to kill anyone,” says Caduceus. “There’s really nothing to worry too much about, besides Fjord, and right now there’s nothing we can do about that.”

Molly sighs, and glances back at Fjord on the bed. It itches, knowing he can’t help wake him up again, knowing there really isn’t anything he can do at the moment—magic has never been his forte, and Greater Restoration didn’t work. Besides, what’s he going to do against some weird-ass curse? Shout at it? Ha.

“And my sleep patterns, apparently,” he says to Caduceus.

“We sleep near each other, it’s not hard to figure out,” says Caduceus. “You get up a lot. Always around the same time.”

“My bladder keeps a clock, maybe,” says Molly, fiddling with his deck.

Caduceus doesn’t say anything, but the look on his face says he really doesn’t believe Molly. After a moment, he says, “You want to talk about it?”

“What’s there to talk about?” says Molly.

“I think you know,” says Caduceus, setting out two slightly chipped teacups. The hell of it is, he’s saying it kindly, gently, like he gets it. The hell of it is, Molly’s pretty sure he does.

So he lets out a breath and leans back on his palms, cards pressing into his tattooed hand, watching Caduceus fuss around with the tea. “I used to be much better at sleeping through the night,” he admits, and Caduceus’ ear twitches, like a cow’s. “It’s harder to do that when you’re—stuck, under someone with a grudge. Did everyone tell you about—about all of that?”

“Some, yes,” says Caduceus. “Jester and Caleb, mostly.” He looks up from his teapot. “It still haunts you.”

See? Perceptive. Molly rubs absently at the back of his neck, where a collar once bit in, where a faded scar still lingers. “Any advice for having it stop?” he asks, not really expecting any.

Sure enough, Caduceus shakes his head. “Talking helps, though,” he says. “And I’ve always found a good cup of tea tends to help with that.”

“I happen to like talking and tea,” says Molly, and for good measure he slips a bottle of whiskey out of his coat. “Feel like spicing the tea up a bit?” he says with a grin.

Caduceus scrunches his nose up at him, deeply offended. “I still don’t know why you all seem to like that,” he says. “It tastes terrible.”

“It’s an acquired taste, and anyway,” says Molly, pouring just a tiny bit of whiskey into his teacup, “when you drink this it’s not like you’re drinking for the taste.”

“Why else would you drink something besides water?” Caduceus says.

“To enjoy the immediate aftereffects,” says Molly, shoving the cork back on and slipping it back into his coat. He’ll give the rest of it to Nott, later. He can’t possibly drink all of this himself, and Caduceus doesn’t seem to like alcohol very much. Or milk. “Trade you a story while the tea’s steeping? At the very least you’ll take my mind off Fjord and—and what’s haunting me.”

“You can’t ignore that last part forever,” Caduceus says. “But sure. I can’t guarantee I’ve got any good stories, though, I lived in a temple for a very long time.”

“I saw, it’s a lovely place,” says Molly. And it had been—it was a little bit rundown, sure, but it was a bright and beautiful garden, and Caduceus’ sister had picked a flower and braided it into his freshly-cut hair. “Tell me something that happened after you joined up, then. I’ve been trying to catch up.”

Caduceus hums, drumming his fingers on his thigh. “The first time I came to the Invulnerable Vagrant, I thought the Pumats were quadruplets,” he says, and Molly snickers. “I was really getting concerned for their mother, up until I got the explanation about how three of them came about. Did you know they’re simulacrums?”

“Oh, I knew,” says Molly. “Honestly? At first I was pretty sure they were all brothers, too, just not quadruplets.”

Caduceus laughs, and says, “They sort of are, aren’t they?”

“If you squint at it that way, yes,” says Molly, shuffling with his cards again and pulling one out of curiosity. It shows just one cup, its edges lined with gold and the water inside flowing freely, but it’s facing the wrong way. Ace of cups, reversed. Dammit, Moonweaver. “Feel like playing a game and pulling a card?” he says instead, in lieu of the story. There’s not a lot of bullshit he can spin right now. “If it’s higher than this,” and he shows Caduceus the card and the number on it, “I’ll answer one of your questions. If it’s _lower_ , you answer one of mine.”

“Oh, that game,” says Caduceus. “I know how that one works.” He reaches over and pulls a card at random, then shows it to Molly: an old human in the mountain mists, a glowing ball of light emerging from the palm of his hand. Molly blinks, and for a minute he swears he sees Caleb on the card instead, sees red hair and blue eyes instead of white hair and milky pupils. But no, it’s still the same old hermit.

“I think you win,” says Molly, sliding the ace of cups back into his deck. Major arcana tends to beat minor arcana in games like this. “Congratulations. Ask me a question, and I’ll answer as honest as I can.”

“How are you holding up?” says Caduceus.

Molly glances at Fjord, then sighs. “Better than I was,” he says, honestly, “certainly much better than Fjord right now.” He looks back at Caduceus, runs a hand through his hair. “I’m glad to be back, here, with these people. Those seven months were not—there’s not a lot worth talking about in them, not over a good cup of tea. Sometimes I have nightmares about them, that’s pretty much it.” Besides _everything else_ , but again: not worth talking about over tea.

Anyway, he’s not lying. He—really did miss everyone, deep down.

“Sometimes?” says Caduceus.

“All right, I have nightmares about them _often_ , but I walk them off and get a full night’s sleep,” says Molly. “Used to do it in the circus whenever I couldn’t sleep, two years ago. There’s just something about a walk under the moonlight that feels calming, at least to me.”

“Like walking through a garden and seeing everything blooming,” Caduceus says.

Molly imagines it: Caduceus’ little grove, in full bloom, a riot of colors and life on tombstones. He thinks he might like to go back there someday, in the midst of spring. He knows Caduceus wouldn’t mind if he picks some flowers for Yasha, there, and—he can understand the parallels, between the garden and the moonlight.

“Something like that,” he says. “Although—wait, did you ever meet those terrible, terrible bandits before you left the first time?”

“Oh, those,” says Caduceus. “They were a bit confused over where you went, and a couple of them started stripping when they saw us, it was strange.”

Molly giggles into his sleeve and says, “All right, well. We met them again before we picked you up, and it was while I was having a walk.” He snickers again, and continues, “I was on my way back when I noticed that someone else’s tracks were there when they weren’t before, so already I was suspicious. Whoever they were, I figured they’d probably want to surround the group, and were already gearing up to do so. I knew Beau and Caleb were up, and I’m very fast in very dim places. So—I tripped the alarm by spooking a rabbit into crossing over. Only, I didn’t realize Caleb had made the alarm _audible_ , so a moment later there was this gods-awful noise ringing through the clearing waking everyone up.”

He pauses for dramatic effect. Caduceus is hooked now, leaning forward with eyes fixed on him, wanting more. Molly grins. He’s still got it, and it warms his heart to know that.

Then he says, “Next thing I knew, a bandit fell out of the tree _right next to me_ , screamed, and threw his pants at me while babbling.”

Caduceus’ laugh catches him off-guard. It starts off a low rumble, shoulders shaking like he’s trying to hold it in, before it bursts out of him, like one of those, what’s the word, geysers of water bursting from the ground. He grabs on to Molly for support, and Molly can’t help it—he laughs, too.

“They did that exact same thing when I met them,” Caduceus manages to choke out between giggles. “I don’t know _why_. They seemed very sorry when I met them.”

“They just keep running into us,” Molly gasps. “Poor fucking idiots, still can’t find good enough leadership after all this time. Was it the redhead this time?”

“Oh, yes, poor boy,” says Caduceus, straightening up to catch his breath so he can pour them both some tea. “I gave them some gold. I wasn’t using it anyway, it’s just heavy metal.”

“You,” says Molly. “You, I like.”

\--

When Fjord wakes up, it’s to Molly and Caduceus, drinking tea.

It’s a weird enough sight. Molly had seemed a little awkward around Caduceus, like he hadn’t been sure what to make of the member of the Mighty Nein who’d been folded in after his death, but hey, seems like he’s gotten over it. They’re both drinking tea and chatting to each other, and Molly’s animatedly waving a hand around, a habit left over from when wide gestures and shitty handwriting were about all he could use to communicate.

“Where’s everyone gone?” Fjord mumbles, half-awake.

“Fjord!” says Molly. “You’re awake! Thank the Moonweaver. Caduceus and I were catching each other up—I see you haven’t told him about the Harvest Close festival.”

Fjord stares at Molly, then swings his gaze towards Caduceus, who’s sipping at his tea and grinning at him.

“ _Three_ times?” he says.

“I’m going back to sleep,” says Fjord.


End file.
